Your interpretation should be expressed in an argument that shows how your chosen photographs grapple with and work with the subject in order to give the viewer larger meanings, perspectives, and new ways of seeing.

Write a 1,250- to 1,500-word essay that advances an interpretation of a photographic series of your choice from the winners and shortlists of the World Photography Awards (2012-2022).
Your essay should demonstrate your close reading skills by explicating visual elements in a photographic series, explaining how particular choices within the photographs contribute to shape your understanding of the subject at hand. At its core, you should be able to answer the fundamental question of close reading: How does the presentation of the content inform and ultimately shape our understanding of it? (How does the way it’s being shown to us reveal something about the subject worth thinking about?)
Most series contain 6-8 photographs; while you can (and should) reference multiple, you should focus on 2-3 photographs to do a visual close reading and write about at length. The artist’s brief summary of the series can be found above the images which provides a basic level of context—so it is then up to you to uncover details within the series that contribute to a greater understanding.
Your interpretation should be expressed in an argument that shows how your chosen photographs grapple with and work with the subject in order to give the viewer larger meanings, perspectives, and new ways of seeing. Explain why we should see the choices made by the artist as strategic ones for addressing the content. • Unlike the Literacy Narrative in Unit 1, the Close Reading Essay must be written in standard academic English and should have a clearly articulated thesis. All body paragraphs should have strong topic sentences with clear transitions and close textual analyses. For general advice on writing the Close Reading Essay, consult the following entries in The Carolina Reader: the Student Guide to the Close Reading Essay, Mike Bunn’s “How to Read Like a Writer,” and Signs.
• For analyzing visual texts in particular, see Dan Monahan and Richard Barsam’s Looking at Movies as well as Jenae Cohn’s “Understanding Visual Rhetoric.”
• Your Close Reading Essay must be 1,250 to 1,500 words in MLA format. You may choose to bring in 1 or 2 outside sources for this assignment in order to provide context for your chosen series—but keep it brief and site your source according to MLA rules of formatting.